Mumbai ; An adult woman has the right to choose her vocation and cannot be detained without her consent;Observing sex work is no offence under the law, the Bombay high court set free three sex workers detained at a women’s hostel. “There is no provision under the law which makes prostitution per se a criminal offence or punishes a person because he indulges in prostitution,” Justice Prithviraj Chavan said.
What is punishable under the law is exploitation or abuse of a person for commercial purposes and soliciting in public places.
The women were “rescued” by the Mumbai police from Chincholi Binder area in Malad, in September 2019, after laying a trap using a fake customer. They were produced before a metropolitan magistrate, who remanded them to a women’s hostel and called for a report from a probation officer.Later, the magistrate refused to hand over the custody of the women to their respective mothers as the magistrate found that it was not in the interest of the women to stay with their parents and directed that the women be kept at a women’s hostel in Uttar Pradesh.
The probation officers’ report revealed that the women were from a particular community from Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, and there was a long tradition of prostitution in the community.The women had moved the court through advocate Ashok Saraogi after the magistrate’s order was upheld by Dindoshi sessions court.
The court said the magistrate ought to have considered the willingness and consent of the women before ordering their detention. It added that the magistrate appeared to be swayed by the fact that the petitioners belong to a particular caste and it had long history of initiating girls of the community into prostitution.The single judge bench added that keeping in mind the interest of the women, the state government can, under PITA, seek directions from the court to send them to corrective homes.
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